and the missed pill
by fressamour
Summary: "What does it say?" Caroline asks in a quiet voice because she's afraid if she speaks any louder the reality of their situation will finally hit her. (Rated T for now)
1. Chapter 1

She should have known when Max rushed to the restroom fifteen times in the diner on Monday, barely even making it the last time before customers started to leave.

"There's nothing wrong with the food just the waitress!" She heard Han call after them as she hurried behind her best friend.

She found Max kneeling over the toilet in the first stall and she looked absolutely miserable.

"I think I'm dying," she'd groaned. "This is death. I don't have a Will but burry me with my laptop. There are some horrifying things on there I'd be a bitch to subject you to."

Caroline chuckled as she pulled Max's curly hair into a low ponytail and held it out of her face as she hurled again.

Tuesday went the same way. And they just assumed it was a bug that hadn't reached the diner yet.

"I shouldn't have smoked the blunt with my dealer's sister." Max said.

On Wednesday she could barely get out of bed.

Which is why now, on Thursday, Caroline is currently sitting on the floor on the other side of the locked bathroom door biting all of her nails off.

"How are you doing in there?" she asks for what's probably the seventh time in the last two minutes. In her defense, her best friend hasn't even said a word or made a sound. There hasn't been a gasp or a loud breath of relief.

Absolutely nothing but silence for two excruciatingly long minutes.

Then suddenly there was movement behind the door and considering it was midnight and Caroline had been covering both of their shifts all day, she doesn't have the energy to get up.

Max opens the door and there's not a lot of readable emotion on her face. She just looks down at her best friend with red-rimmed eyes and the blonde is unable to figure out if the hastily wiped away tears are from relief or if a huge bombshell has been dropped on them.

"What does it say?" Caroline asks in a quiet voice because she's afraid if she speaks any louder the reality of their situation will finally hit her. She got the test only half-jokingly. There weren't any guys in Max's life that she knew of. Or at least she thought so.

When Max steps over her then slumps down the wall next to her the answer is clear. Her head falls on Caroline's shoulder.

"I'm pregnant." It doesn't even sound like Max. Her best friend is usually so confident. Always so sarcastic. But this is the first time in the three years they've been friends that she has ever heard her friend sound so…broken.

Caroline feels her best friend's light shaking against her. She does the only thing she can think of. She laces her fingers with Max's and pulls them into her lap. "We'll figure something out. I promise."

xxx

The free clinic is full of sick people, varying different ages, so immediately both women feel out of place when they enter the small waiting room.

Caroline checks them in and Max hides her face like someone she knows could recognize her behind her large sunglasses – despite it being the middle of November – and under black hoodie where her hair is tucked neatly to her nearly indistinguishable.

Even the blonde doesn't look her best today, with a pair of Max's navy blue sweatpants and her coat. Somehow, the Waitress decides, her best friend pulls off the ragged look.

"They'll call us." Caroline informs as she sits down. Instantly their hands find each other. The blonde shakes her leg nervously.

"That's making me sick." Max gags warningly.

Promptly the former billionaire's leg stops. "Sorry."

The silence between them is painful. The noise of the dozens of kids and coughing patients _should_ drown out their thoughts.

Caroline wants to ask.

Max looks embarrassed.

They're both tired.

"How?" the word slips out of her mouth in a sigh and she hears the judgment as soon as the word rings in her ears. But there's no other way she knows how to say it. There's no other way she can form it without sounding like she's disappointed. "How did this happen, Max?"

Her friend cracks a small smile. "Don't tell me I have to explain how babies are made to you, Caroline." But she takes her hand away and scrubs her face tiredly with it. "I got tired of being alone." Is her only explanation.

_But you're not alone_, Caroline wants to say. _I'm here._ She knows she can't be there for Max in the intimate way her best friend craves but she can be there for her in other ways.

Caroline doesn't respond. Instead she sits and waits with her friend. Her only friend, really.

An hour passes before they both hear, "Max Black?"

"That's me." The brunette stands.

"Do you want me to…?" Caroline asks, still sitting.

Max looks at her thoughtfully for a moment but eventually shakes her head. "I can do this." She says, mostly to convince herself. She pulls her coat tighter around her body as if the hide the nonexistent bump of her belly.

"I'll see you in a bit." Caroline promises as her friend leaves her sitting there alone.

Max glances over her shoulder and nods then disappears behind a blue door.

xxx

For an hour, Caroline does nothing but bites her thumb nail and pace the length of the waiting room nervously. She gets to pulling on her blonde hair when a nurse calls her name.

"Miss Caroline?" she calls from the same blue door that took Max from her.

"Yes?" she answers immediately.

"Max would like to see you."

Through the tall rectangular window of the wooden door, Caroline sees immediately that her friend is no longer on the operating bed. The nurse unlocks the door for her and she thanks her quietly before closing it behind herself and locking it again.

"Max?" she calls out.

There's a noise, like a sob, from behind another door. Caroline knocks on it softly.

"Max are you in there?" the door pushes open a bit from the pressure of her knuckles. "Max?" Caroline asks, peeking around it.

The waitress is has her knees to her chest on the bathroom floor and she looks up at her best friend with red eyes. "I thought I could do it," she says before another sob escapes her. "But all I could think of was all the times my mom wished she'd aborted me."

"What if I'm just like her? What if I make my baby hates themself and me?"

When Max jokes about how horrible her mom was, it's easier for Caroline to imagine her childhood. She never thought any of the things her mom said and did got to her. Mainly because it was easier to pretend Max was strong enough to handle it.

Decisions like these, they're not easy. Caroline is pro-choice but even she knows that it's difficult for some people to kill a harmless lump inside of them when it could be something that brings them a great amount of joy.

"You're not your mom, Max." Caroline says, getting down on the floor next to her best friend. "I've never met her and maybe you share some qualities with her but you are _not_ her. She's just the woman that gave birth to you. _You_ raised yourself and you did a pretty good job. Most people walked right past me when they saw me stumbling in the subway but you stopped and helped me."

Max looks at her.

"You're not going to be a terrible mother." She tucks a rebellious lock of the curly hair she finds herself irrationally envious of behind her best friend's left ear. "Your mom didn't have something you have."

The brunette swallows weakly. "And what's that?"

"Me."

* * *

**A/N**: I do plan for this to be a multi-chapter fic. Hopefully it'll go on long with the right motivation and encouragement. Also if anyone knows of any other long Maxoline fics, I'd love some recommendations in my tumblr ask or PM them to me. There's not a lot on here.


	2. Chapter 2

Max keels over on the sidewalk, emptying – rather violently – the contents of her stomach that only consists of wheat and milk.

The other New York pedestrians pass by; looking momentarily more curious and intrigued than worried, then going about the rest of their lives without giving her so much as a second thought.

"I told you not to eat that bagel, Max." Caroline says from behind her as one hand holds back the brunette's curly hair and the other rubs soothing patterns in her back.

Despite wearing a reasonable amount of layers to protect herself and her baby, of course with Caroline's never-ending insistence ("there's a baby in there now Max! It's not just you anymore!") Max feels her best friend's touch as if the palm were on her bare skin.

And frankly, she doesn't find it as comforting as the blonde seems to believe it is. Instead of making her feel reassured, she feels a plethora of things, amongst them she feels warm in her belly like maybe she's about to hack up the little she had for dinner too.

It's a new feeling, at least not one she can remember feeling at all in her life, Max is sure of that. Kind of like the one she gets when she talks to someone she likes but amplified by her pregnancy and she knows there's just a fetus but she can already tell it's not too keen on that feeling.

And then comes last night's dinner, topping the brownish white puddle she's just made on the ground.

**xxx**

The diner is unsurprisingly empty when Caroline and Max enter it.

As they remove their coats, Earl eyes them both suspiciously due to Caroline avoiding his greeting gaze and looking agonizingly guilty about something – _she_ wants to tell their colleagues about their predicament, their _child_ as she calls it, but Max is adamant on keeping it a secret for as long as she can hide the bump.

Han comes from the back where Oleg is visibly and discourteously scratching himself in a ghastly area from behind the small order window that only makes Caroline never actually want to eat their food.

She'd said it before but seeing that? She gags. She means it now.

"You're late," Han accuses as he limps towards both women.

Caroline takes Max's coat and Max looks annoyed by it. "Sorry," she says to Han with the least repentant attitude. "Caroline got sick on the subway. Cleared the entire cart. I finally got to sit in one of the seats and my ass is not grateful." She forces a chuckle to make the story more authentic.

Han looks to the blonde for confirmation and she takes too long to respond as she stares at him like a deer in the headlights. They hadn't practiced a story to excuse their tardiness, not that they'd had the time with Caroline asking Max if she's well enough to work for the day the rest of the trip. So she feels like she's been put on the spot and she's not good with lying under pressure.

Max should have known this; she's experienced it firsthand like the time she told Max her ass _didn't_ look great in those jeans. She thought Max looked good but just…not particularly her ass in those jeans.

Han returns his accusatory but really not all that terrifying glare away from the preposterously flustered Caroline and back to the extremely calm Max by the cash register, behind the counter, and the look on his face suggests he knows she's lying but wants her to admit it. "What is-,"

He's cut off by Caroline finally weighing in, at an uncooperative and wrong time. "I got sick. Guess who thought getting sushi from Seven Eleven was a good idea?" she pumps her hands in the air awkwardly. "This bitch."

"I got sushi at a Seven Eleven once…" Oleg chimes in, leaning through the serving window to be feel included in the conversation. "And by sushi I mean-,"

The thought of sushi makes Max's stomach coil in the wrongest of ways.

She clenches a fist over her mouth and looks down at the counter, trying to focus on the ugly floral patterns that seem to be flexing, with a pleading tone she says, "Please do _not_ finish that sentence."

Earl's suspicions are only confirmed when Max dashes to the restroom as she had been before earlier in the week.

"Certainly I have said cruder things…" Oleg monologues aloud, not really speaking to anyone but to himself.

"She's just…feeling sick." Caroline lies.

The cook doesn't care enough to see through it and returns back to cooking food that will be served in five hours, if they can rally up enough customers.

Han simply shrugs, already bored and having forgotten about their tardiness. "As long as she does not get my customers sick." He warns in what he thinks is a threatening tone.

"If she doesn't, the food surely will." Earl rejoinders from his post by the door. The blonde waitress barely suppresses a giggle, only turning away from Han's line of view – not that he can see her laughing anyway he's too short and busy mumbling about hiring employees that will respect him as he limps back to his office.

While her gaze follows him, her eyes land on the restroom door. She wonders if Max needs her.

Part of her, all of her actually, hopes that she does.

"So," Earl takes Caroline's attention, and her elbow, away from her best friend that still hasn't returned as she gets ready to go to Max. "What's really wrong with our girl?" taking her to the back, he looks through the cupboards for something.

"What makes you think something's wrong?"

Pulling out a coffee cup with Max's name written on it in her surprisingly neat script, Earl looks over his shoulder as he presses a couple of buttons on the hot water dispenser "I've seen that girl stumble in here late after a night of too many drinks, sex with questionable strangers, and even with a broken leg but I've never heard her blame her lateness on someone else."

"Nothing?" Caroline tries pathetically, her shoulders hitched up in a shrug.

Earl gives her a deadpan "don't bullshit me" look and Caroline's reserve, along with her slim shoulders, drop significantly.

She visibly slumps and her forehead falls into the palm of her hand.

She's never been good with lies, especially important ones. "Honestly? It's not my place to tell." She says apologetically.

The old man nods sympathetically and it's clear he already knows. But he resumes the task he came in the kitchen for.

Max enters through the colorful doors then; looking almost betrayed as she glares at the shameful looking Caroline. Her black eyes ask the question she doesn't voice aloud. "Did you tell him?"

Caroline shakes her head in the negative with big innocent blue eyes that usually made melted Max into a puddle but today she is just so damn mad. At her circumstances, at Caroline's persistence to be her caretaker, at her morning sickness, and every goddamn thing she could see, feel, hear, and taste.

"Here." Earl's elderly hands shake as he pushes a cup of tea in her hands. "My first baby mama, the only one I ever stayed around for…" and there's a delicate hint of shame in his words that both women pick up on easily. Max more than her friend. Not because she's known him longer but because she feels parallel to what he feels now. Maybe if she'd done things differently…

"Anyways she had morning sickness just like you. Doc told us this could do the trick, depending on how far along you are."

He's only just put the teabag in the water so the liquid inside the cup is clear but Max can see a red haze steadily spreading throughout the rest of the cup. "You're not alone. We're all here for you."

She swallows hard. There goes that warm feeling in her stomach again.

What the hell _is_ that feeling?

"Thank you…" She frowns, unsure of how to respond to people being nice to her.

She thinks she's had enough practice with Caroline but even now after three years it's still difficult to accept courteous favors without expecting to owe them something in kind.

Earl puts a hand on her shoulder and she looks him in the eyes for only a moment but her gaze casts downward, almost ashamed.

Max isn't one to be weak, or well _show_ her weakness but right now her emotions are deeply contorted to a degree that even _she_ can't analyze and it could be easy to blame it on the ill-timed pregnancy.

And in a way that _is_ the case, the pregnancy itself has become an inconvenience – not that she can ever think of a time being pregnant by someone you barely know _isn't_ an inconvenience. Maybe if he were rich…

But since learning about her pregnancy, it's forced Max to take a good long look at her life and evaluate all that she has and hasn't accomplished and when she looks at Caroline she thinks of what's held them both back.

If Caroline's father hadn't been corrupt, even if they'd still gone broke, Caroline still could have done something with her business degree. She could have made something of herself.

She was a smart and determined woman.

But she was a Channing and the Channing's were not to be trusted.

Even Max found it difficult to trust Caroline specifically, but for an entirely different reason. One she still hadn't figured out…

All that stood in Max's way was she never believed in herself to apply herself hard enough. A lot of that blame falls back on her mother, which is the only reason she's even considering being a mother. She wants to do something right. She wants to be better than her own mother's example in some sort of way. Even if it means having a child by a man she doesn't know or love much like her mother had.

But, Max thinks, at least she knows her child's father.

She knows his name and where he lives and what he does for a living…even if it wouldn't be enough to support her and a child. She knows _enough_ about him. More than she will ever know about her own father.

But still, could she really blame her failures on her mother? There are a lot of things she can thank her mother for; her stubbornness, her unwillingness to trust, her addiction to weed, vodka, and Cheetos. But following in her footsteps and becoming a deadbeat nobody is no one's fault but her own.

* * *

**A/N**: I don't know if I've expressed this but my interest in updating stories relies solely on the amount of feedback I get. I know I know - not healthy or even fair but it's true and something I'm working on. Now I know the Maxoline fandom isn't all that big so I trust that I've attracted a good amount of people still but if you could share this story with your friends in the fandom that'd be great. And be ever so gracious by "paying" me with reviews.


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